Merlin's Ring

by H. Warner Munn

  “Biarki! Stir your clumsy feet! Are you stuck in the bog? Did you come to watch us work? Get your ugly carcass up here!”

  That was Skeggi. Flann only laughed. Biarki, the land-owner, came out of Ms reverie with a jolt. He climbed the hill where the others already had a good pile of poles cut and stacked.

  He bent and picked up an armful. He straightened up and faced down the slope again. It was then, to the far west, beyond a headland where might lie a bay, that he saw the low smokes and knew that the land was not as empty as he had thought

  He cast down his eyes hastily and said nothing. He hoped the others had not noticed. Apparently they had been too busy to look so attentively at the scenery, for they did not mention the smoke.

  Down in the meadow, Biarki could not see the traces of man and breathed easier. It was still possible to fulfill his plan. It would only be necessary to complete it a little quicker. He might also have to build his own house.

  2

 
  Sheltered by the cliffs at the waterfall, Thyra was busy with the stranger who seemed so much more than that to her. She dragged him, with a strength the others would have never believed, into a spot where the sunlight was strong.

  She made a bundle of flowering thyme and put it under his head for a pillow. Although there were fur robes in the knorr, she left them until later. There is strength and heat and life in the sunlight and she wanted him to have all those things.

  She handled him tenderly, stroking his hair, laying a palm against his cheek. It was resilient, but so cold. There was frost on his eyelashes and as she looked a little flake was loosened and fell away. She thought his eyelid twitched, but could not be sure.

  “Oh, come! Come back to me!” she prayed, and sprang to her work.

  The bitter wind wailed in the hills and over her head the birds were streaming back from the sea to their nesting grounds. At this time of year there would be no true night, but it would be colder. During that chill twilight, until morning came again, she would have it not merely warm for him, but as hot as a man could stand and live. Then he would live! Then she would be alive again—for him! For this, she yearned so passionately that she thought the heart of this girl would burst with longing and forced herself to become calm.

  She gathered bark and little twigs and leaves. Calling upon the memories in this mind, she shredded them in her hands and made a little pile near a large flat expanse of lava sand. She sought above the high-tide mark for dry driftwood. There was plenty, for the Gulf Stream washed these northern shores and cast up flotsam from more exotic climes. She heaped up a great store of it and when she was done, she began to gather stones.

  Jagged lava pieces, lumps of basalt, round bombs of rock hurled from some ancient roaring crater—all these treasures that had known earth’s fires—now destined to know flame again. But how to attain that flame?

  The old Thyra would have struck flint against steel into tinder and had fire in moments. The new Thyra knew of the method, but Skeggi carried the tinderbox and he was not there. She considered using the flint ax and the steel sword. Two little lines of concentration formed between her eyes. Her face cleared.

  She took the stranger’s right hand and slipped off his ring. His hand had been clenched and it had escaped the notice of the men. Now his hand was open and the ring came off easily. It was very hot in her palm and she rolled it around, remembering.

  He had told her that if danger was near him, it would be warm. So he was in great danger now? Well, she would see to it that he would be protected as he had never been before!

  She picked up some of the powdered bark and held it hi her hand and placed the ring upon it. The sun shone through the stone in the ring and made a tiny bright spot in the dust, but the tinder was damp.

  For an instant, the strengtk and imperiousness drained from her face. She seemed no more than a small girl—alone —without friends, and lost.

  Flann, if he had seen her then, would not have thought she was other than the Thyra Skeggisdatter he had known so long.

  She closed her eyes. “Oh, Master of the Winds, Quetzalcoatl! If you ever loved your godson, help him now!”

  A breath of wind swept across her hand like a caress. The ring became a shining circle of light. Beneath it, the tinder began to glow and smoke. Carefully, she tipped the tiny coal into the crumbled bark and lightwood pieces and blew upon it.

  A feeble flame sprang up. She fed it into strength and added scraps of kindling. It seized upon them voraciously. A spiral of smoke rose into the air.

  She clapped her hands together and laughed, throwing her head back. She was beautiful in her happiness. The ring was cold now and she slipped it back upon the limp chill hand. Had danger passed then? It seemed so.

  Suddenly a rainbow sprang into being in the spray at the foot of the fall, like a symbol of promise. She faced it, head bowed in reverence.

  “Ahunu-i! Spirit of the Wave! Forgive me! I know you are with me. I will not doubt again!”

  Once more, eager vitality swept through the tired body. She built the fire high and threw on great pieces of wood, until the heat drove her back. Then she packed the stones into the mass of flames. The fire roared. The sparks cascaded into the air and the coals gleamed around the reddening rocks, shimmering with heat and sea salt—crimson and green and blue.

  At last she could force the body no further. She sank down to rest, gazing into the incandescence, half asleep. It was in this torpid state that the men found her when they came, bringing back the poles she had ordered them to bring, and carrying the food they had found.

  She came back to life after the short rest, and although they were weary too, after the trials of the day, she made new demands upon them.

  At her direction, they dug a wide, shallow pit in the sand. Around it, the poles were driven in firmly and slanted to meet in the center. They were fitted together and tied at the top. , The curious men wondered what this labor would create, but the spell seemed strong on her again and she was wearing her strange look. Only Flann dared to ask and it is possible that no one else would have received any answer. He had. been the first to follow her into the glacial melt tunnel—she hardly noticed the others.

  “A booth?” The word seemed unfamiliar to her. “No, not a booth—whatever is a booth? A sweat lodge of the Abenaki—the People of the Dawn! Make haste, men!”

  Make haste they did. They covered the poles with the sail; they threw the sand they had dug out of the pit around the perimeter of the lodge they had constructed. They raked out the glowing stones into the pit, leveled them evenly and covered them with the hot sand dug from beneath the fire and spread soft heather over the whole. The canvas sail bellied out on all sides with the heat when the flap was down.

  Robes were laid, fur side up, upon the heather. Then, and not until then, the man from the glacier was carried in and laid on the robes, in the middle of the lodge.

  The girl went hi and motioned the others away. The door flap fell. As she lay down at his back, Skeggi came in also. He eyed her keenly.

  At first she seemed resentful, then she smiled and extended her hand. He took it and squatted down beside her, not speaking. They looked at each other.

  Skeggi did not know what to think. Was she still his daughter? If not, what or whom could she be? Strange things happen in strange lands, so travelers tell. Strange things are expected to happen, but such a wonder as this? Such a happening had never been told before by any skald or saga man.

  Only when she smiled did she seem like his own girl whom he loved. Yet he admired the fire and spirit she had shown today. She knew so well where to go and what to do in this strange empty land that was so new to all of them. It was as though she had been here many times before; almost as though she had been watching and waiting for the right time to bring the man beside her out of the ice.

  How could it be possible? They had never been apart, not in Norway, not in the Faroes, not ever, since she was born. Yet now she us
ed strange words and names, she spoke of unfamiliar places; she gave orders like a queen—or a goddess!

  Skeggi was a simple man, but he was honest and good. Whatever she had done before had always been right in his eyes. What she was doing now must be right, because she was his daughter when she smiled—and she was still smiling. He kissed her and her lips returned the pressure. He relinquished her hand and lay down on the other side of the man. He gave a long sigh. Presently, worn out from the labors of the day, he slept.

  None of them had eaten, except that Skeggi had plucked some blueberries during his journey; yet the girl was not hungry. Excitement had superseded the needs of the body. Now, as she lay in the stupefying warmth and the importance of haste had passed, she could scarcely keep her eyes open.

  She heard, from a great distance, Biarki and Flann snapping at each other, outside in the cold. She knew that they were cleaning the birds and fish. Perhaps they would eat Perhaps they would sleep under the overturned boat after eating—it seemed a matter of little moment She had what she wanted and she had wanted this so hopelessly and so long. Her arms were about him! He was hers, and she could hold him at last!

  With fingers that trembled, she rolled him limply this way and that, until she could take off his sleeveless vest He seemed a little warmer. She slipped off his soft leather shirt, pulling it over his head. She thought she felt a throb in his temples, but there was no sign of any heartbeat.

  She stroked his heavily muscled arms and ran her fingers along well-remembered scars on his torso. Here, this long one down his ribs—a lance had struck deep and raked on.

  Those claw marks on his back—a cougar’s signature put upon him when they dwelt among the People of the Dawn, called so because the sun rose upon them first of all among the northern nations of red men, on the continent of Alata.

  Ah, Ahuni-i! It might have been, except that his magic was strong and her goddess merciful, that they would never have met.

  Thyra’s body trembled at the thought. She placed her arms around him. Was there a movement? A little one? Only one? She touched the back of his neck with her lips and her eyes were wet.

  So this was how humans cry! She had almost forgotten.

  He was so cold—so cold.

  She unfastened the collar of her woolen shirt and untied the points that held her garment closed. She threw it wide open, drew the robe over them both and fitted her warm bare body tightly to his naked back.‘Her open palms she flattened across his silent heart, her cheek was against his —they were as one.

  Now there was-nothing more that she could do. She had no other magic than her love—no sorcery but her prayers to a goddess revered only in a continent long sunken in the deeps and remembered by no one but herself. The cold of him sank into this body of Thyra’s, which was no longer wholly Thyra’s, chilling it to the very bone, and her heart beat slower as the body’s temperature dropped and bodily processes almost ceased to function. At the end, when unconsciousness came, she did not know if she was falling into sleep, or merciful but lonely death.

  At this moment, the true Thyra Skeggisdatter, who had until this eventful day shared that body with no other, awoke as it were from a dream, to the knowledge that she was imprisoned within it. It is an awesome thing to realize that a body which has been always taken for granted is, after all, but a means of transportation for an inner self.

  It seemed that she was no more than a midge or a tiny moth, fluttering to escape, beating helplessly against impenetrable walls. She knew, without knowing how she knew, that this tremulous prisoner was her real self, that very essence of being, which men call for lack of a better name— the soul.

  She had been captured and thrust aside. She was imprisoned in her own body as completely as though a Viking jarl had taken a castle and had placed its lord hi the dungeon keep until the invader decided what to do with the original owner.

  She was very frightened.

  Somehow it came to her that the new tenant of her body sensed her fear and was amused. She felt that a calm and soothing voice spoke to her soul. The little shivering thing that was herself was keld warmly. She experienced a sensation of peace and supporting courage.

  She knew then that the interloper was also feminine, for there was an mtertwining between them and an understanding that could come no other way. Knowing this, she began to feel a rapport and, instead of anger, a deep pity, almost akin to a sudden affection.

  Yet all the voice had said, or trilled, for it was like a series of running bell notes, was, “Forgive me, little sister!”

  There was a weariness in it and a despair that made her wish to weep. Here was the utter desolation that comes to a soul which feels that no end can come to torment until Asgard falls and the Fimbul Whiter comes to still all things that move and have being, until the new earth is built for the Aesir.

  So many years of waiting had come and gone and now there had been hope and it too had gone. Now for this strange visitant, which had for this one day been Thyra, there was nothing more, ever again.

  She felt a need to offer comfort to her captor, but there was no way. Yet, it seemed that the thought, the wish to do so, was in itself enough. Perhaps it was the outpouring of the compassion she offered that caused her to forget her own misery and fear, in the face of the greater agony of spirit and hopelessness that she sensed the other must somehow combat or fail completely hi her desire.

  Thyra had drawn strength from that other self. Now she returned that strength. There came about a union of spirits, a combining, and although they were still separate entities they were no longer captor and captive, but as the visitant had called Thyra in her plea—it was as if they were indeed sisters.

  There was a buoyancy, an uplifting hi the coming together that brought about a resurgence in the two souls which so strangely felt themselves kin.

  A little warmth came back into the exhausted body. The heart beat a little stronger. Some vitality returned. Now Thyra knew that the other had overcome her distress. They had reassured each other. The body would live. They could go on in it together while that should be necessary and there would be no strife between them.

  Again it was as though the little bells rang. Thyra Us-tened while the other spoke to her mind. They were now so close that it did not seem as a new thing to her, but more as though she was remembering a dimly recalled, half-forgotten tale of long ago. As she listened, she also watched, for she was seeing wkat the otker had seen.

  “There was a land engirdled by the sea, far away in the southern waters, its name Atlantis—” the voice began, and so she saw it, as it were from above. A country under a curse of dark sorcery and war. It planned an evil doom toward all the world and this scheming brought it finally to the attention of tkose gods who had loved that land, but hi mercy and justice must sink it beneath the waves.

  One only escaped. Alive, yet not alive. A young girl whose soul was placed by magical union into a replica of herself made of the unusually propertied ruddy-golden metal, orichalcum, which only the Adantideans knew and used.

  Thus prisoned, unable to reactivate the mechanism of the image by herself, she must await release by another hand. She floated and waited through millenniums, in one of the damaged swan-ships of Atlantis, above that sunken land. The ship, also made of orichalcum, absorbed the energy of the sun, attained a degree of intelligence, and took on a semblance of independent lif e.

  Then she was released, by a man whose wooden ship had been caught in the weed that held her own and together they swore a pact of mutual help in the completing of separate vows each had sworn.

  Her mission, with his aid, came to a successful conclusion, but she was unable to fulfill her vow to him because of the decaying of the metal in the ship and in her metal body.

  So they separated, knowing love for each other and anguish at then* parting. He, to be imprisoned in the ice, but—she had thought—not truly dead, for he was godson to a great mage and had drunk of the elixir of lif e. She, by the arts of Atlantis, pr
eserved her identity, for she had the power of thrusting aside for a time the energizing spirits of other living things and homing there for such time as she must leave or her host must die.

  So she had lived on, sometimes temporarily housed in the bodies of fish and seals, or in the airy apartments of the mind known to falcons, kittiwakes, and gulls. Late.r she knew the joy and affinity with humans, sharing briefly the lives of the infrequent visitors to those shores. Always she was watctüng over her lost love until the slow movement of the ice should bring him forth once more.

  The long, long years of waiting! The anxiety, the dread that in the end all should go for nothing. Perhaps there might be no people nearby when the moment came to act. People had come and gone. How narrow the chance that she could do anything but watch helplessly when he would be freed, only to tumble into the sea, still locked in the ice and so be lost forever!

  For what could a soul, as human as hers still knew itself to be, do to help him if imprisoned in a body without hands?

  Then, before the time had really come—the volcano, the shaking earth—and no time to reach other humans! In desperation, she looked down upon the water from the eyes of a raven and saw the little boat coming in toward the spot where it was needed.

  And* the new possession—and the happiness—and the effort—and the despair.

  No true darkness through the night as they lay there waiting. Sunset, a brief pale twilight, then sunrise, tingeing the ice-capped mountains and soon the light struck the walls of the sweat lodge until, seeping through the covering canvas, it dimly lit the interior.

  The buried rocks still held heat by the time full morning had come. The sand was warm and comfortable beneath the robes and the smell of the heather was sweet. Beneath them the ground still trembled and at first Thyra and her almost-sibling felt no more than that distant disturbance. Yet Thyra’s body, still so tightly holding the rescued man, sensed another vibration against it